Magen Cubed's Blog, page 4

On the Subject of Tiny Things

I'm a utilitarian by nature. Well, nature's a funny word. I would say I'm a utilitarian by way of anxious nurturing, after years of boot-strap sermonizing. Lately, though, I've been trying to focus on tiny things. My therapist says that's probably a good idea.

Tiny things are, by definition, small. Trifling. Unnecessary. Indulgences or dalliances. A night out and dinner with friends is an indulgence. A bottle of new perfume is an indulgence. A Saturday afternoon spent burning through the last season of Hannibal, and squirming on the couch as Francis Dolarhyde undergoes his transformation into the Great Red Dragon, is an indulgence. I'm not used to indulgences. I'm not used to tiny things.

Indulgences are a confusing prospect, aren't they? They are encouraged because the very nature of procuring trinkets and fleeting sensory experiences costs money. Which tickles that little need for retail therapy, which puts money in the pockets of companies, which makes everybody feel better. They are also shameful, fitful little things, because there just isn't enough money to go around these days. See the above about boot-straps and sermons. Indulgences are tortured little creatures that we chase after, but often feel regretful for. "Damn," you say to yourself. "I really could have used that $10 on groceries instead of that little trinket."

Isn't that always the way?

For me, I've spent a lot of time afraid of indulgences. That money would likely be spent better elsewhere, after all. I would feel much happier if I just left it in my bank account. I would pick something up at the store (small, inexpensive; maybe a pair of floral-print stockings for $5 on sale at Target) then little by little feel the guilt compound as I walked through the aisles. "Do I need this?" I'd ask myself. "Couldn't I just spend that money on food instead?" Weighed down by grief, I would rush back to the aisle to drop off whatever I decided I didn't need and flee, giddy from the satisfaction of my Rational Grown-Up Decision, to the check-out counter.

I realize that acquiring trinkets doesn't make me a happier, healthier person, but to say that we must strip all frivolity from our lives to be Rational Grown-Ups is soul-crushing.  Because, as I'm sure most of you already know by now, there's never going to be enough money. There's probably never going to be enough in your checking account for you to do The Thing That You Really Need To Do. So you're going to put it on a credit card, which you may or may not pay off. The same way you may or may not pay off your student loans before you go gray at the temples. We all may or may not live our lives a medical emergency away from poverty.

We're all like Schrödinger's cat, in a way. We are all certainly wealthy and impoverished, in many in different ways, all simultaneously. Comfortable and pained. Held up high and brought fretfully low. Told to chase things we want and told we're stupid for it.

I say this because, not unlike cats in boxes, I'm never certain of anything. I'm never certain if I'm right or wrong to go back to school in an economy that gleefully punishes me for it. I'm never certain if I'm right or wrong to write in an era where poverty-level wages are fairly standard for many authors. I'm never certain if I have a future. I'm never certain if I will ever have enough money in my checking account to feel safe and human.

Instead, I bought a tiny bottle of perfume. It smells very nice, like lavender and honey. This pleases me.

For now, I'm okay with that.

In Search of Roots

As far back as I can remember, my mother has always had one stern warning for me and my brothers: "I don't want you guys to turn out like me and my siblings."

She's not wrong to be fearful. My mother's family is a toxic network of abuse, neglect, guilt, addiction, shame, denial, and back-biting. For a litany of very good reasons, I spent most of my life totally cut off from my mother's family, except for my grandmother Max. Max currently lives with us now, because she's bed-bound and in need of 24-hour care. She lives with us because my mother's brothers abandoned her in an adult care facility and left her to die, and my mother had to rescue my grandmother from their gross, willful negligence.

This is the kind of stock I come from. You can see why I'm in therapy, right? Except for Max, I didn't really have any contact or connection with my extended family. That's a good thing, and I understand that. But because of this, I only ever get my mother's side of the story about her siblings. Of course, I know a lot of it is true. I've seen their dysfunction in action on numerous occasions, and Max is living proof that her own children are very cruel. If you leave your own mother to die in a lonely bed, in a understaffed care facility, I tend to think there's nothing about you worth knowing.

There's a problem with this, though. Whenever my mother warns me not to be like her siblings, I can immediately see the parallels she's talking about. I can see echoes of my uncles in my brothers, and I see echoes of my aunt in myself, from what little contact we've had with them. Because I had an aunt, once. She's dead now. She died of cancer that my mother blames her for getting. I didn't know her then for the same reasons I still don't know my uncles. When I think back to my aunt, and I listen to my mother talk about her, I can see why my mother's worried.

I catch myself saying the things my aunt said, lashing out about the same things my aunt did. I see my mother look at me. I think, "She must think me like her sister." Her Crazy Sister. Her Bitch Sister. Now, as an adult, I'm trying to get to know my aunt, in the only way that I can. Through Polaroid photographs and letters, the stories told to me and the ones I remember for myself.  I'm trying to walk backwards through time to see how my aunt got to become Crazy Sister, Bitch Sister.

I'm trying to salvage the woman my mother fears I'll become.

To be frank, I didn't know much about my aunt as a kid. I knew that she ran her own interior decorating business. I knew she played piano and painted angels. I knew she had one son. I knew she was married many times. I knew she loved NASCAR. I knew she had a Pomeranian named Tiger and a three-legged cat named Sable. I knew she was thin as a skeleton. I knew she loved shopping. I knew she drove a big gas-guzzling SUV and always had gum in her purse. I knew she was very feminine and made sure to act it. I knew she wanted me, the consummate tomboy, to do the same. I knew she was bossy and always made a scene. I knew that she took me shopping for clothes when I dropped a lot of weight. I knew she was angry. I knew she cried a lot. I knew she took pills. I knew she thought she was always sick. I knew she took medication she didn't need because of it.

I now know a lot more, though.

I now know that her father, my grandfather, abandoned his children on multiple occasions. I now know my grandfather used to hit her. I now know when she was old enough she started hitting him back. I now know she was overweight as a child. I now know she never felt good about herself. I now now that she spent her entire adulthood in therapy. I now know that she never forgave her mother for staying with her father all those years. I now know that she ran away a lot as a teenager. I now know that she lost her teeth and had to get dentures in her 20s. I now know that she lost her first baby, a little girl, and never recovered. I now know that her first two marriages were to men who beat her within an inch of her life. I now know that her relationship with her son was messy and strange and sad. I now know that her third marriage was to a man who loved her but had a coke addiction. I now know that the pills she took for illnesses she didn't have caused the cancer that killed her. I now know that she wanted to encourage me to lose weight like she did.

I now know that had relationships with women. I now know that she lied about them. I now know that everybody called her a Fucking Dyke. A Fucking Lesbo. A Fucking Liar who Slept with Women to Get Attention. Fucking Crazy Bitch.

Maybe my aunt was a bad person. Maybe she was a broken, sad, angry person. Maybe I'm not my aunt. But I look at all these threads - all these atoms and particles, these disparate elements that made up a woman I never really knew - and I see the Crazy Bitch my mother is afraid I'll become.

And I can't be so hard on her anymore.

This is a Story about Doors

This is a story about a girl. This is a story about doors. This is a very long story.

It's Friday morning. I have an appointment with my campus therapist Kate. This is terrifying in ways that I can't articulate. I've never been to therapy. I've thought about it, I've talked about it, I've advocated for other people I know to seek professional help for their problems. But every time I get to my therapist's door - and I have been there before, roaming the halls - I stop. I see the plate glass double-doors with their clean lines of decorative frosting, the row of outdated orange chairs that make up the makeshift waiting area, the tasteful potted plants that brighten up the beige walls.

Every time, I get so far as the door. Every time, I turned around. Every time, I can't bring myself to walk inside. Every time, a voice swells inside me.

You don't deserve to be here.

On Friday morning, I drive to school. I make my way to Ransom Hall with its three floors of compact hallways and hard angles. The campus is quiet; people are shuttered away indoors for regular class hours. A warm breeze makes it feel more like August than September. I make it to the canopy of trees outside the Life Sciences building and I start to cry. I can't stop. The girl reading her physics textbook on a nearby bench looks at me. Her face is pained, but she tries to hide her gaze in her book. I'm grateful for that.

I make it to Ransom Hall. I ride the elevator up and down the three floors. I peer around the corners of the claustrophobic hallways and their rigid geometry. The walls are the obnoxious orange and blue of our logo, our mascot, our basketball team. It's silent; the dingy fluorescent light fixtures cast jagged shadows in the margins of the splintering auxiliary corridors. It makes me think of a horror film, or a video game.

Press the right shoulder button to crouch. Hold your breath. Get ready for a Quick Time Event. There be monsters here.

I make it to the frosted double-doors. I take a deep breath. I turn around. I go to the women's room; I leave the lights off and hide in a stall. I imagine a laundry list of faceless people who deserve this appointment more than I do. People with real problems, like eating disorders or PTSD. When someone comes in, I wait for the tell-tale scrape of the lock and the rattle of the adjacent stall. I scatter before anyone can see me leave. The voices that chase me out sound a lot like my parents.

It takes another five minutes of riding up and down the elevators before I make it to the frosted doors again. This time I walk inside. I think of chummed waters off a golden coastline. I think of jungles so dense you can't see the sun through the trees. I see the receptionist behind a sliding glass window. She has a soft voice and a warm eyes behind tiny red glasses. She smiles. I pitch my voice up a full octave and smile as pleasantly as I can, even though my knuckles are white around the handle of my purse.

I check in. I sit down in a soft orange chair I think I recognize from an episode of The Brady Bunch. I think of leaving. I think of shark teeth. Everything is so bright and orange and soft and unreal. I make up a girl in my mind. I see her face, her small shoulders, her long dark hair, her beautiful brown eyes. I imagine that she's a chemistry student, or maybe biology. I imagine her walking across the campus with bones too heavy for her delicate skin, her back fit to break. I imagine she has a story about a frat boy rapist, or a predatory father, or a boyfriend who couldn't take "no" for an answer. I imagine her here in my place. I imagine how much she needs this.

I imagine how much she needs someone to talk to. How much she deserves this. How much I don't.

My therapist Kate appears at the doorway in a blue sweater. I can hear the voice murmuring from the threshold behind her, telling me to run. Her smile is so fragile, like the lines of her hands and collarbone. She reminds me of Frances McDormand from Fargo. I immediately think of three movie quotes to spew out in a lame attempt to be funny. I stifle the dumb laugh that threatens to bubble up. I follow her to a tiny room in the back of the offices. I sit in a tiny chair. She smiles. I smile.

She asks why I'm here.

I tell her it's a long story.

She says to tell her whatever I can.

I speak.

And speak.

And speak.

And speak.

At some point, the voice whispering from the doorway fades into silence.

September Comic Book Review Round-Up

Want to catch up on my latest comic book reviews and articles? No? Well, too bad.

Image Comics and the Female Experience

There has been a great deal of discussion in the last few years about the role available to women in comic books, their representation and how creative teams address women’s experiences. Mainstream comics has been grappling with such issues, making great strides in some cases and falling flat on their faces in others. But beyond how scripting, artwork, and the corporate culture help to shape how women are presented on the page, there is another critical component to affects these characters: the worlds in which they operate.

Why Midnighter Is So Important For Queer Fans

My relationship with queer superheroes has always been a little complicated.

As a child growing up in the 1990s, I came into my own reading Marvel Comics and watching DC Saturday morning cartoons. Back then openly queer characters were hard to come by. There was the heavy queer implications of Mystique’s relationship with Destiny, the more-than-friends flirtation of Rictor and Shatterstar, and the thinly veiled romantic attachment shared by Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn in Batman: The Animated Series, but nothing concrete. (Both Rictor/Shatterstar and Ivy/Harley have been confirmed as canon, but when I was a kid, no such luck.) Even Northstar, Marvel’s first openly gay character, was tiptoed around, his sexuality rarely mentioned for several years after coming out in 1992. For most of my life as a comics fan, queer representation was most often found in meaningful looks and lingering touches, leaving readers to fill in the details. That left queer fans like me feeling left behind.

Review: Zodiac Starforce #1

Zodiac Starforce #1 from Dark Horse Comics is a nostalgic romp into the Magical Girl genre. Plucking inspiration from Sailor Moon, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and 1980s Saturday morning cartoons, writer Kevin Panetta and artist Paulina Ganucheau (with color assists by Savannah Ganucheau) put an interesting spin on the genre by focusing on slightly weightier subject matter. While more upbeat Magical Girl titles like Boom Studios’ Power Up focus on quirky characterizations and endearing, highly stylized designs, Zodiac Starforce is more inclined to use tried-and-true tropes to observe the ramifications of the heroic lifestyle.

 

Life with Dentures: One Week Later

This appropriately juvenile, fashionably faux-punk Instagram photo is me in my new dentures. It's also the first time I've taken a picture of my mouth straight on, at least that I can remember, and showing my teeth. I've written about the reasons why here, in case you didn't know.

It's been one week since the dentist removed all of my teeth. One week since I've been couch-bound, my gums sutured shut, my entire face swollen. One week of liquid food stuffs and a cocktail of medications to make it bearable. So far it's been....interesting. Eating is weird. Talking is weirder. I'm relearning where to put my tongue to make consonant sounds and how to speak without slurring. Oh, and not having teeth in general is weird. It's been quite a while since I've been sans teeth, so that takes some getting used to. Also, the sneezing thing. Sneezing has been a trip.

Overall this venture has been an altogether rocky, painful, awkward, vulnerable undertaking.

You know what, though? I don't regret it. I do regret doing it the week before the semester started, though. That probably wasn't the best idea.

Ow.

I have months of healing ahead of me. I'll need adjustments, impressions, and check-ups every few weeks for the foreseeable future. Solid food is still tricky business as my gums continue to shrink back down. It absolutely sucks at least 85% of the time. But I feel...lighter. I no longer feel trapped by medical problems beyond my control. I no longer feel trapped by the chronic pain and the constant anxiety of people recoiling from my bad teeth. Of being judged. Of being laughed at.

Dentures are dumb. They're clunky and weird. I'm so happy I have them.

 

Adventures in Real Life: Miami

Recently I took a trip to South Florida to visit my girlfriend Melissa. After a summer spent indoors writing reviews, articles, and the latter half of a novel, I needed some sunshine, some ocean, and my girlfriend. It was a good trip. We went to the beach to read comics in the sand. We sat on patios drinking coffee and eating cupcakes. We stayed out far too late with friends to close down bars and coffee shops. We went to Miami to visit Wynwood Walls. We took pictures of each other and irritated one another greatly.

Here are some of our adventures, courtesy of my phone.

August Comic Book Review Round Up

Want to catch up on my latest comic book reviews and articles? No? Well, too bad. Each month I'll be posting a round-up of all my stuff, so watch this space.

Shutter #13 Review

Shutter #13 from Image Comics is a book about a lot of things. Despite its fantastical settings, off-kilter storybook cast, and the distinctive theatricality of Kristopher clan drama, this title’s lofty yet deeply personal themes often fly close to the sun. To the credit of series writer Joe Keatinge and artist Leila del Duca, however, the presentation is deft, thoughtful, and delightfully understated. Seemingly disparate elements such as family, loss, memory, anger, and identity are all tightly interwoven components of Kate Kristopher’s journey, a complex web of ties so tight they often choke rather than bind. Shutter #13 is no exception to this rule. As this quirky adventure series kicks off its second year, Kate Kristopher is back in an issue full of surprises, mystery, and exciting possibilities.

Negative Space #1: The Monster of Mental Illness

Negative Space #1 from writer Ryan K. Lindsay and artist Owen Gieni is a book about monsters. The horror its cover promises is one of subterranean nightmares, where fleshy pink tendril creatures stand at the ready outside lavish stone altars. Hooded figures loom in the shadows like Lovecraftian cultists, serving as caretakers of their otherworldly domain. But Negative Space is so much more than its monsters. It’s a book about depression, isolation, and human connection in a world where emotions are commodities and experiences are quantified. If what makes us human can be bought and sold, who among us are the real monsters?

Wolf #1: The Spirit of Film Noir

Wolf #1 from Image Comics promises a city full of monsters and the pulpy swagger of crime noir. The creative team, consisting of writer Ales Kot, artist Matt Taylor, and colorist Lee Loughridge, deliver on that promise with bravado. Theirs is an otherworldly Los Angeles drenched in myth, magic, and film noir allusions, as rich as its sun-bleached hills and the murky darkness that swallows them at night. Leaning on the familiar tropes of Raymond Chandler’s crime novels, hardboiled paranormal detective Antoine Wolfe has a headful of nightmares and a death wish, moving comfortably from one recognizable tableau to the next. He walks mean city streets populated by conmen and creatures, racists and hired goons as he reluctantly takes on the case of orphaned teenager Anita Christ, who may just prove to be a major player in the impending apocalypse. Just as Antoine burns above the dirty city below, so too will the world in this genre-bending noir mystery.

How Starve Explores America's Relationship with Food

Starve from Image Comics is a sharp character drama that examines America’s increasingly bizarre relationship with food. The creative team, consisting of writer Brian Wood, artist Danijel Zezelj, and colorist Dave Stewart, do so by lampooning the melodrama of competition cooking shows. Taken on face-value, their critique is straightforward. Combining the format of Iron Chef with the demands of Chopped, adding in the high-stakes sensibilities of an international sports tournament, Starve embraces the cultish idolatry surrounding celebrity chefs to wave its finger at contemporary food programming. But Wood, Zezelj, and Stewart’s criticism of American food culture is much more nuanced than that, examining how class affects our relationships with food, and how the media we consume warps it even further.

This is a Post about Fear

This isn't a topic we're supposed to talk about. We're supposed to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and put on a good face. We're supposed to be our best selves all the time, dancing for our lives in front of an audience whether real or imagined. But sometimes that's not possible. Sometimes things are just scary and you can't help that. Sometimes you just have to just ride with it, doing whatever you can to weather the storm.

This is one of those times. And me? Honestly? I'm terrified.

I'm about to finish the handwritten draft of my third completed novel. I'm in the process of getting The Crashers out into the world with my book production team at Booktrope. I'm smack in the middle of figuring out how to better do the Author Thing (TM). I'm working for a new start-up as a regular contributor and trying to write better, more thoughtful comics criticism. I'm going to visit my girlfriend Melissa in Florida soon. I'm about to go back to school shortly after that. I'm trying to figure out what to do for work when I graduate. I'm trying to stay positive and productive.

Also, I'm getting dentures. I'm 29 and I'm getting dentures. That's sad and scary and weird, and I hate it. I hate it because it underscores everything else I'm doing. I hate it because it undermines me just when I should be feeling my best.

I'm 29 and I'm getting dentures because I had braces when I was a teenager. Growing up I had good teeth, dodging the curse of weak oral health that runs in my mother's side of the family. My teeth were a little crooked on the bottom and stuck out a little too much on the top, but they were healthy and my dentist was always pleased when I went in for check-ups. Then when I was 17, my parents wanted to put me in braces to fix my imperfections. They went to a local orthodontist with a good reputation. Everything was fine for the first few months, but, slowly and surely, that changed.

I have metal allergies. I can only wear specific metals - gold, silver, titanium, steel - because everything else - nickel, lead, copper - destroys my skin. My parents explained this to my orthodontist, who assured them she would only use safe metals. Instead she used wires with nickel and copper, and the resulting allergic reaction led to a pH imbalance that ate away at my teeth under the braces. There was no enamel left. No matter what I did, my teeth were going to fall apart.

At first the orthodontist blamed it on my poor hygiene and said that I was at fault. I was too lazy to brush my teeth, she told my parents when asked what was happening. Her assistants used to scold me like a dog and march me to the bathroom to teach me how to brush. Soon her office refused to continue treating me because I was so lazy and unwilling to brush my own teeth. The orthodontist pulled off my braces and demanded my parents pay her the remaining balance for her trouble. When she pulled off the braces, there was nothing but pulp underneath. I lost the four crooked bottom teeth that brought me to the orthodontist in the first place, reduced to pitted nubs. It hurt to eat, drink, and breathe, lying awake at night with a mouthful of decay.

It was only when my family doctor reached out to a colleague from the local medical college that we figured out what had happened. Then my parents, along with the parents of other kids with similar problems, threatened so sue for negligence. To keep my parents quiet, my orthodontist agreed to pay for the repairs. Some teeth were removed and replaced with implants; others were salvaged or capped. Unfortunately, my city isn't very big, and everybody in the dental field know each other. Every dentist I went to during the six months it took to put my mouth back together told me that I had no business shaking down my orthodontist for money. That I was lazy, that I was extorting her, that I didn't deserve any of this work for free. That I would lose all my teeth by 30 and it was all my fault.

They were right, though, at least about what would happen to my teeth. Without enamel my teeth have continued to fall apart. If I went to a dentist, they just kind of shrugged. No point in fixing what was just going to fall out, they said. Just wait it out and have them pulled. So I have, trying to keep what teeth I have while I save up for dentures to replace them. But when you're broke all the time, just trying to scrape pennies together to go to school and pay bills, you have to pick what's important. My teeth weren't important; they were a source of shame, sadness, and sleepless nights. They were an embarrassment that made it hard to smile when I was hyper-aware of every pit and exposed nerve. They were a reminder to be careful of what I ate or risk pain.

Now I'm 29, and I finally have the money for dentures. I finally found a dentist who will listen to me, who won't insult me to my face. I should be happy, and part of me is. Part of me is eager to be free of the chronic pain and constant anxiety. The other part is just sad and scared, because I've been sad and scared where my teeth are concerned since I was 17. Because all I had was four crooked teeth, and now I'm about to lose them all.

So this is a post about fear. Sometimes you just have to weather the storm. That's all I'm trying to do.

 

Small Stories in a Crowded City

When I used to work downtown, I would take walks on my break. Downtown Fort Worth doesn't offer much in the way of scenery, but it has neatly plotted streets. You can move briskly from the cold mid-century sterility of the courthouses to the sleek modern edges of the Water Gardens on Commerce Street. One Friday afternoon I went walking, and along the way, I ran into a man.

We each came to the intersection at different times and paces, waiting for the long light to change. To this day, I don't remember the man's name, and I kind of regret that. He was eighty-five or so he said, hunched and well-weathered with a slow, shuffling gait. He looked at me from behind his thick smudged lens and smiled. I smiled back. We talked about the weather until the signal finally changed. It was May so it was hot, but not quite as hot as May in Texas usually gets. Once the signal flickered from the red palm to the walking man, we followed suit across the street.

I had nowhere in particular to be. He said he was going to the courthouse, a bundle of government forms and papers under his arm. I remember they made a scratching sound against the fabric of his big, brown, too-heavy-for-May sweater. He told me a story about his wife, who had recently died of cancer. They had been together for fifty years, each on their second marriage and raising their total of five children together. I don't remember her name either, but he spoke of her with such a brilliant light in his eyes that I had to listen as he described her laugh and smile. They were married for fifty years; once the children were all gone and making children (and even grandchildren) of their own, he and his wife decided to adopt a little boy from China. He was a smart, sweet little boy, and the light of their lives.

Then his wife came down with cancer. The bad kind, he said; the kind that moved too quickly for them to do anything about. Before he knew it she was in hospice care in their living room and his children came to help him care for her. She had only been gone for three months he told me, his eyes still bright. He told me how hard it had been, and how lonely he suddenly felt without her. He had his young son, who was now on the frustrating precipice of teenhood, and he had his children and grandchildren, but it was still hard.

Now the government wanted to take his son and place him with a "more suitable guardian." Someone "better fit" to deal with a boy his age and needs. That was why he was on his way to the courthouse, with all his forms and papers. To meet with his oldest daughter and their lawyer, and to talk to the family court about keeping his son. We walked all the way across downtown together; him shuffling along on his stubborn legs, me following and nodding. Just listening. Just letting him get it all off of his chest.

Eventually we came to another intersection. My break was over, and the courthouse sat across the street like a looming threat. I told him I had to head back to work, wishing him the best of luck. He smiled again and told me to have a good day. I went in one direction and he went in the other. We never saw each other again. This was well over a year ago. I don't know how his case went, or if he got to keep his son. I don't know how he dealt with his wife's death, or how his family helped him through it.

I just hope it all worked out for the best.

5 Things About The Crashers: Bridger Levi

1) Bridger is the most spiritual character in the main cast. Every other character is agnostic, atheist, or no longer practices the religion they grew up with for one reason or another. Bridger's relationship with faith has long been contentious, raised in a working class Jewish community and following his distant father's conservative views despite conflicting with his identity as a bisexual man. Marrying a Protestant woman further complicated this, neither at home in Caitlin's world or disconnected from his. Over time, he abandoned his faith, unable to reconcile his relationship with it.

It wasn't until his cancer diagnosis, his divorce, and gaining precognition that Bridger finally found his way back to spirituality. He doesn't believe in the existence of a concrete capital G god so much that there are fibers that bind all things together, under the surface of everything we see and know. There may not be a divine plan, but there are some things that happen for certain reasons, and some people we're supposed to meet along the way. His ability to see the future, as imperfect and fragmented though his visions may be, is proof enough that some things are simply meant to be.

2) Bridger didn't get arrested until the age of forty-five. Since then, for an entire host of reasons, he's decided to make a habit of it. It just makes sense for the wealthy white guy of the household to get left behind to deal with the cops in case there are unforeseen circumstances while on patrol. He always has bail money, and he'll never say no to an opportunity to irritate the East Brighton City police.

3)  Just like getting arrested, Bridger got his first tattoo at the age of forty-five, as well. אָדָם is the Hebrew form of Adam, which he had placed over his heart to remind him of what truly matters. His relationship with Adam represents his tether to the physical world whenever he's lost, tripping through futures with no context or guide, and is his line back home. This is the first of many personal talismans that Bridger has tattooed on himself over the course of the series, each meant to protect his mind from larger unknown threats as he travels into the future.

4) Bridger and Caitlin never had children. She once got pregnant five years into their marriage but terminated the pregnancy, choosing only to tell him after the fact. While at first he was hurt by her decision not to tell him about her pregnancy until it was already over, he knew when they met during college that she never wanted children. This was her choice, and in the end, he was grateful that she had made it. The idea of becoming his father - cold, cruel, and impossible to please - haunted Bridger for most of his life; never having to find out was a relief.

5) Weekends with Bridger: getting high, putting on Iggy Pop, and making everybody dance with him. His roommates have come to accept it.

Bonus:

6) Babysitting Hannah on a regular basis has made Bridger an honorary Brony, but not by choice. His now encyclopedic knowledge of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comes from Hannah's repeated marathons, from which there is no escape.